Well, new to publication, but it was first delivered as a keynote several years ago at 2015 Academic Conference of Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy. A spiral text that moves between story and critical discourse, nods to Tiptree’s, “The Women Men Don’t See”…. You can read it here.

Many long days since I’ve last updated. Lots has happened, of course, in the way of life and busynesses. A new group of writers at The Writer’s Studio. Late 2016 I joined the board of Plentitude Magazine, a work trip to University of Colorado, Boulder, hosted by the marvellous Marcia Douglas.

I had the chance to see the Stephen King redrum inspiration hotel, The Stanley!

And also to see the beautiful vistas of the Rocky Mountain National Parks, Arapaho lands.

I’ve also had the honour of being selected as one of the 2017 mentors for The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. We will be having shared learnings with the 2015 scholars and the broader communities of cohorts who are “committed to applying their knowledge and skills to pressing social issues”. I’m very much excited about how our widening circles of understanding and communications will affect change and actions. I’m deeply grateful to 2010 scholars, Libe Garcia Zarranz and Danielle Peers, who recommended me for this role.

Upcoming publications! It’s been a long while since having new adult fiction in periodicals. A novelette, “And the moon spun round like a top”, is forthcoming in PRISM International Issue 55:3, Spring 2017. A ficto-essay, “Notes from Liminal Spaces” is also coming up in Uncanny Magazine some time. Much excite!

I’ve been working on essays and short stories. More essays and stories in the works. Ideally I’d like to ready a short story manuscript by the end of summer. We’ll see, my little pretties.

July on Denman Island surrounded by lovers of books, stories, Salish Sea… I can’t think of a better way to enjoy the summer! Come and explore the island and delve into literature at the Denman Island Writers Festival. There will be writing workshops, too! Please visit their website for further details, scheduling.

I’ll be reading and participating on a panel.

*NEW CONTENT*

Here’s the link to the schedule! I’ll be doing a solo reading on Friday, July 14, at 1:45PM. And participating on a panel, “Imagining Other Worlds”, with Carleigh Baker and Deborah Campbell, moderated by Stewart Goodings, on Saturday, July 15, at 7:30PM. Main stage event.

Join Dean Sigurdson and Hiromi Goto BA’90 for an evening of conversation and performance. An alumni association Faculty of Arts event, meet other alumni, connect, reconnect, network and build community in the Metro Vancouver Area. Please register.

KILLJOY is a collective that organizes events for the QTBIPOC community on unceded Coast Salish territories. The april speaker series is coinciding with an online campaign to fundraise for a QTBIPOC-centred arts festival in august. Campaign here: generosity.com/community-fundraising/killjoy-fest-2016–2

Oh MY GOD! I’ve been sitting on this news forever! And now we can finally talk about it!

Our first ever graphic novel will be published with First Second Books in 2018. Still a ways to go, Celine will be starting her brilliant but long labour (respect!) of making visual art out of words soon. I’ll blog a bit more about the process later, but for now a big colourful (if it’s online colour ink is free! free! FREE!) splashy announcement and interview in the LA Times 0____0 !!!

TWELVE MILLION KERMIT ARMS FLAILING IN THE AIR YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!

Thank you to my Agent, Sally Harding & the Cooke Agency for finding the perfect home for this project! Thank you to Calista Brill at First Second for seeing the spirit of what I imagined…. ~___~

Is blogging still a thing? I’ve fallen off of regular postings. My partner reassures me that I’m micro-blogging on Twitter and I suppose it’s true. A dear writer friend of mine, who is very savvy, has pointed out writing a lot on a blog is basically writing for free, when it’s important that we try to find gigs that will pay us for our labour. Yes, I thought. That’s true. It takes time to write a post and when I had kept a more regular stream of entries I would find creative energy rather spent after a particularly long piece. But then a blog is also a nice way to share some thoughts with readers & the broader writing community so there’s that.

Hullo! Today’s topic is Radio Interviews! XD XD XD

It’s been a while since I’ve been on air. Thank you, Julia & Art, for having me come in for the Writing Life program! Happily it wasn’t live, but pre-recorded. Far less pressure for those (like me) who get all sweaty at the idea of not being able to take something back….

Alas.

Tips on how to prepare for Interview both live & pre-corded:

Listen to previous interviews that the program has conducted.

Ask for a list of questions, even rough copy, of what they intend to ask to be sent to you several days prior to interview.

If there’s a question that you think is inappropriate, etc. let the interviewer know you cannot respond to that question. (But also don’t think you can veto almost all of them, unless there’s some huge problem with the line of questioning– then it’s better to just politely let them know that this doesn’t seem like the right venue for your work, thank you for the invitation, however. Be professional.)

Review the questions and jot down notes for yourself, so if you have brain freeze your notes will bring you back.

Practice aloud at home, by yourself or with someone else asking you the questions.

Julia and Art were all graciousness and the questions very professional & engaging. We’d gone through most of the questions and I was feeling rather relieved that I’d held it together, we were almost done. They asked me if I ever experienced writer’s block and if I did, what I did to deal with it.

Yes, I experience it, I relayed. Going off the interview notes script I’d prepared for myself I decided I wanted to reference Octavia E. Butler (for the listeners, because not everyone knows about her amazing Speculative Fiction) and create an analogy between how I deal with writer’s block and the behaviour of the aliens in her Xenogenesis trilogy….

In the trilogy, I explained, there’s an alien race called the Oankali, who have three sexes. The third sex was able to manipulate genetic material, and shape things in this special organ inside them, called a…. My mind groped around in the dark for the word. “Ya….” As Julia and Art gazed at me and the interview silence began stretching my mouth completed the word before my mind was finished… “ni”. “Yani.”

A little thought bubble wafted around in my back brain, “Really? Was that the word?” but my forebrain was charging ahead to complete the interview. The alien, I explained, with the “yani” would sometimes find itself in need of new genetic materials. They’d say, “My yani hungers.” And so they would go out to collect new things. When I have writer’s block, I explained, I think of it as feeding my “yani”. I read books, watch films, go to art galleries, etc. to feed what’s been depleted…. A petit uneasiness lingered in the deepest reaches of my thought bubble mind, but I forged on, the need to be present and respond efficiently and clearly so necessary on radio. Finally I was done. Phew!

I thanked my kind hosts and walked home, set back to working on a very difficult presentation on gender, feminism and identity constructs for an upcoming university visit.

Many days later I received an email from Art that the interview would air the next day. The day of, a few hours before the program was to begin the little thought bubble in the back of my brain slowly bobbed its way to the front and swelled into comprehension. “It’s not ‘yani’…the organ in the third sex in the Oankali is the ‘yashi’. It’s ‘yashi’! You said ‘yani’ because you conflated ‘yoni’ with ‘yashi’, you actually said on radio, “My yani hungers.” YOU MIGHT AS WELL SAID, MY PUSSY HUNGERS!!!!! OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!

Dear friends, sometimes, no matter how well you prepare, you will make a mistake.